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Updated: May 9, 2025
The democrats were fond of pointing out how much was still wanting towards the restoration of the Sempronian corn-laws in their full extent, and at the same time passed over in silence the fact that under the altered circumstances with the straitened condition of the public finances and the great increase in the number of fully-privileged Roman citizens that restoration was absolutely impracticable.
Perhaps it was too late for any such reform as that contemplated by the Gracchi to succeed, the condition of Rome then being in no important respect like what it had been in the time of Licinius Stolo; but one of the most interesting chapters in the history of things which might have been is that which relates to the possible effect of the Sempronian legislation.
The necessity of such a measure was chiefly due to the suspension of the work of the agrarian commission, which had proved an obstacle to the continued execution of his brother's scheme; and there is every reason for believing that the new Sempronian law restored their judicial powers to the commissioners.
While according to the Sempronian ordinance renewed by Cato every Roman burgess settled in Rome had legally a claim to bread-corn without payment, this list of recipients, which had at last risen to the number of 320,000, was reduced by the exclusion of all individuals having means or otherwise provided for to 150,000, and this number was fixed once for all as the maximum number of recipients of free corn; at the same time an annual revision of the list was ordered, so that the places vacated by removal or death might be again filled up with the most needful among the applicants.
The government no doubt had to come to terms with the multitude, where its own immediate interest was at stake; this was the reason for the renewal of the Sempronian corn-law. But it was not to be imagined that this populace would have displayed earnestness on behalf of an idea or even of a judicious reform.
He deemed it beneath his dignity to accept the consular province assigned to him by the senate in accordance with the Sempronian law, and Crassus in this followed his example.
Even the multitude of the capital, who, although having no objection to a street-riot, found it inconvenient to have their houses set on fire over their heads, became in some measure alarmed. It is remarkable that in this very year the full re-establishment of the Sempronian corn-largesses took place, and was effected by the senate on the proposal of Cato.
Tiberius Gracchus was dead; but his two works, the distribution of land and the revolution, survived their author. In presence of the starving agricultural proletariate the senate might venture on a murder, but it could not make use of that murder to annul the Sempronian agrarian law; the law itself had been far more strengthened than shaken by the frantic outbreak of party fury.
As early as 622 the consul of that year, Publius Popillius, the same who directed the prosecutions of the adherents of Tiberius Gracchus, recorded on a public monument that he was "the first who had turned the shepherds out of the domains and installed farmers in their stead"; and tradition otherwise affirms that the distribution extended over all Italy, and that in the formerly existing communities the number of farms was everywhere augmented for it was the design of the Sempronian agrarian law to elevate the farmer- class not by the founding of new communities, but by the strengthening of those already in existence.
The Valerian, the Porcian, and the Sempronian laws had all been passed to that effect. Now there had been no popular vote as to the execution of Lentulus and the other conspirators, who had been taken red-handed in Rome in the affair of Catiline.
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